Chapter 7

The next morning I decided I would prove to the dwarfs I was useful. I may not know how to cook, but I do know how to do hair. As we ate breakfast (more bread and porridge) I told the dwarfs I was an excellent hairdress-er and wanted to give them all haircuts.

Well, you have never seen people bolt down their food and run out the door so quickly.

“Wait,” I called to Reginald, because he was farthest away from the door and thus last to leave. “I’m good at it, really.”

He turned back to face me, hands out in an apologetic manner. “You with scissors near our heads? It’s just not a good idea, Snow White. Trust me on this.” He pulled his cap down tighter over his ears as though to discourage me further and added, “Remember, don’t let anyone in unless they’re from the village—no matter what. And if anyone comes poking around, you run right over to Widow Hazel’s home and tell her about it. She’ll send someone to ring the bell and then the townsfolk will gather to help you.”

“Which house is Widow Hazel’s?” I asked.

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He stared at me with a hopeless expression, and I thought he might break down and cry. “It’s the one right next door.” He pointed in that direction. “Right there.

You’ve been there half a dozen times already.”

“Oh. Right. Widow Hazel’s. I won’t forget again.” He let out a sigh as though he would have liked to believe me but didn’t, then hurried after the others.

I cleaned up the breakfast dishes, then went behind the cottage and did the laundry. This involved hauling water from the well, pouring it in a barrel with soap, putting clothes in, and pounding them with a wooden stick. I was hanging their little tunics and leggings up on a line to dry when I saw her.

She wore a dark brown dress, a white wimple that covered most of her graying hair, and carried a basket under one arm. Her face was wrinkled, but she didn’t look frail or even that elderly. She smiled in my direction and I noticed that, like many of the occupants of the Middle Ages, she was missing several teeth.

I dropped a tunic on the ground and didn’t bother to pick it up. The queen had come for me already.

She walked slowly toward me. “There you are. Working hard and just as pretty as a robin.” I shook my head. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not Snow White.”

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She laughed as though I’d been joking, then reached into her basket and pulled out a perfect red apple. “I’ve brought you a gift. Would you like something to eat, my dear?”

I took a step back from her, wishing I had some sort of weapon. “I’m not really the fairest in the land. I’m just the only one who has all of my teeth, that’s all.” Then I saw the laundry paddle. I picked it up and held it up like a baseball bat. “Get away from me.” She took a step back, her brows wrinkling. “Snow White, what’s come over you? Is that any way for a proper young lady to act? Put down that stick at once.” I suppose it was bound to happen. You just can’t put a modern, self-empowered girl into medieval times and not expect her to snap. I’d already had to bite my tongue and let myself be ordered around by Cinderella’s stepfamily. I was not about to stand by and let myself be poisoned.

“You want to see what I can do with this stick?” I yelled. “I can make applesauce! Take a step closer and I’ll show you how!”

She did not step closer; in fact, she ran in the other direction. Which is when I realized I couldn’t let her get away. In the fairy tale, she poisoned Snow White and that was the end of her plotting, but in my version of the story, what would the evil queen do when she failed in 117/431

that attempt? She’d try something else and I had no idea what—maybe send a dragon or an army or who knew what to destroy me. I couldn’t let her. I couldn’t let her return to the castle.

I ran around the side of the cottage after her. For an old woman, she was surprisingly fast, but I sped after her, stick in hand.

We reached the road that ran between the cottages.

The old woman kept running, right toward the center of the village. Which would prove to be her final mistake.

“Help me!” I yelled at the doorways we passed. “Come out and help me!”

We reached the well and the old woman ran around it, putting it between the two of us. We both caught our breath, panting as villagers came out of their homes to see what the noise was about.

They jogged over to us, making a circle around the well. As soon as they got within earshot, the old woman clutched the basket to her chest and pointed a finger in my direction. “Snow White has gone mad!”

“Don’t tell them your lies,” I said back. “I know who you are.”

“Of course you know who I am,” the woman said. “I’m your neighbor.”

My next few breaths came especially hard. I lowered my stick and squinted at her as though this would 118/431

somehow change what she’d just said. “You’re . . . you’re what?”

“I’m Widow Hazel. I live right next to you.” There was a murmur of consensus among the crowd and all of their gazes turned to me.

I pointed accusingly at her basket. “Well, if you’re really Widow Hazel, why did you try to give me one of those?”

She took out an apple and held it in her hand. “This?”

“Yes.”

“Because I thought you might want to eat something besides burned porridge.”

The crowd all laughed, and one of the men came and took me by the arm. “Here then, Snow White, why don’t I walk you back to your cottage and you can rest until the dwarfs get home.”

“I’m sorry,” I said in Widow Hazel’s direction. “I . . . I thought you were the queen.”

I know she heard me because the women standing around her all said things like, “Well, of course, who hasn’t mistaken Hazel for the queen? I do it frequently myself.”

“It’s all of them jewels you wear, Hazel. I keep telling you that if you wear your tiara around, things like this are bound to happen.”

Then there was a lot of laughing.

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I went home red faced, and not because I’d just run down the street.

When I got back to the cottage, I sat in the dining room for a long time calling Chrissy’s name.

Nothing.

And nothing again.

It could be days before she found enough shoes to match all her outfits.

Stupid mall. She was a fairy, for crying out loud. She flew places. What did it matter what shoes she wore?

And why in the world did she keep sending me into these medieval fairy tales, anyway? Did she not realize that no modern girl in her right mind would choose to live in a place where no one took showers?

Finally, after calling Chrissy’s name over and over again like it was a mantra, I went to the kitchen and dumped out the old porridge. I was not about to eat it again tonight and it was impossible to repair bad food. I had to start from scratch. Let me say right now that it’s harder to cook with a cauldron and a fire than you might think.

As I cut up vegetables I thought about my situation. I was stuck here and I just had to make the best of it, but I didn’t have to try and bluff my way through things and look like an idiot. It was time to tell the dwarfs the truth.

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• • •

The truth, it turned out, would have sounded much more convincing if I’d been able to come up with some proof. When I told them who I was that night at dinner, the dwarfs sat around the table looking at me like I was not only stupid but insane as well. And this after I’d come up with an unburned dinner for them.

“No, really,” I said, “I’m from the future. I just got here yesterday. That’s why I don’t know how to do very much or who anyone is.”

Percival rubbed his chin with one hand. “Er, and what was your excuse for not knowing anything before yesterday?”